SERBIAN-MACEDONIAN TOURIST COOPERATION

These days, at the International Tourism Fair in Berlin, business people and visitors are especially attracted by the city break offer for Belgrade and holidays in Vojvodina. That is a good indication for future regional cooperation between Serbia and regional countries and their joint approach on third markets. We also talked on that issue to Macedonian representatives, who took part in the recent Belgrade tourism fair. More from Jelena Gligorić.

Serbia and Macedonia finished last year with similar results in the field of tourism: the number of foreign visitors to Macedonia rose by 1%. Although, according to the World Tourist Organization, the tourist turnover at the international market will rise by 3-4%, in Macedonia they estimate it at 5-6%, the director of the Agency for Tourism in Macedonia, Zoran Strezovski, tells our radio.
As of this year, Macedonia will subsidize the arrival of foreign tourists. A tour operator that brings a group of ten guests to stay for three days at least will be entitled to a refund, which, in the case of Serbian tourists, is 10 EUR per person, he says.
Macedonia is preparing tourist projects together with Serbia and is planning to involve other countries from the region, in order to make an offer for the Japanese and Chinese market. These are, at the moment, the most numerous tourist groups in Europe.
Various tours can be offered through regional cooperation, above all cultural and historical tours, wine trails and many other interesting theme trails to be included by the agencies in their offer in tours of Macedonia, Serbia, Greece and Albania, Strezovski says.
Strezovski commends cooperation in creating programme concepts and lays empahsis on religion tourism tours, of monasteries in Serbia, including those in Kosovo-Metohija, and also of monasteries in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania. Serbian tourists are the most numerous foreign guests in Macedonia and in the past two years have exceeded in number those from Bulgaria. They mostly stay at Lake Ohrid and several charter flights to that destination have been introduced. Macedonia also boasts three ski centres, the most popular being Popova Šapka on Mt Šara, which mountain forms a natural border between Serbia and Macedonia.

Source:glassrbije.org/